Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Why Trauma Lives in Your Body, Even After Years of Therapy

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

For years we've been told that healing trauma means talking about it. But what if talking isn't enough?In this powerful conversation, I sit down with Harvard-trained psychiatrist and world-renowned trauma expert Dr. Frank Anderson to explore why trauma isn't simply stored in your memories. It's stored in your body.We discuss why so many women find old wounds resurfacing during perimenopause and menopause, why food often becomes a coping mechanism for unresolved trauma, and why traditional talk therapy doesn't always create lasting healing.Dr. Anderson shares the science behind trauma, nervous system regulation, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, psychedelics, and the small daily experiences that help your brain and body finally feel safe again.If you've ever wondered why you keep reacting the same way despite years of personal growth, this conversation will help you understand what your body has been trying to tell you all along.In this episode you'll learn:• Why talking about trauma doesn't always heal it• How trauma becomes stored inside the body• The surprising reason menopause often brings unresolved trauma to the surface• Why emotional eating is often a protective response• How fasting reveals hidden emotional patterns around food• Why triggers are valuable clues instead of something to fear• The role of EMDR, Internal Family Systems, somatic therapies, and psychedelics in trauma recovery• Simple daily practices that begin creating lasting healingResources MentionedThe Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der KolkTranscending Trauma by Dr. Frank AndersonTo Be Loved by Dr. Frank AndersonInternal Family Systems (IFS)More on Dr. Frank AndersonDr. Frank Anderson is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, internationally recognized trauma expert, and author of Transcending Trauma and To Be Loved. He trained alongside trauma pioneer Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, serves on the board of the Trauma Research Foundation, and has spent decades helping people heal through an integrative approach that combines neuroscience, Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, and body-based therapies.Website: frankandersonmd.comInstagram: @frank_andersonmdDr. Frank Anderson's BooksFor more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep33XConnect with Dr. Mindy:Join Reset AcademyWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Dr. Mindy on InstagramSubscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletterDisclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

If you are loving the conversations on my podcast and you want to go deeper with me, come join me over on Substack. It's where I share the conversations I'm having behind the scenes, the research that I'm obsessed on and paying close attention to, and really the thoughts I don't always get to unpack here on the podcast or any of my other social media. We're taking women's health, fasting, hormones, food systems, mindset, aging, and what it really means to live like a girl in today's world to a whole new level. You'll also get early podcast access, deeper essays on my thoughts around how we can all stay healthy in this modern world. You get community, you get conversations, and exclusive content that I only share there. I'm not joking when I said this is my new

favorite place. It is currently where I am at. So you can head on over to substack. dot, Dr. Mindy Pels.com or just search Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pels directly in the Substack app. I'm super excited to have you over there. Please introduce yourself. And let's dive in to some really good conversations. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast. where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in. 70% of us, that's how many people on this planet will live through at least one traumatic event. Most of us, more than three.

And women, we are twice as long as long. likely as men to carry that trauma as PTSD. Trauma is not rare. Trauma is human. I know because I'm one of them. When I was in my late 30s, I almost died. I was on a vacation in Cabo snorkeling when I swam into a pod of Portuguese manoeuvre, one of the most toxic creatures in the ocean. Their poison surged through me. My throat began to close. My body went into anaphylactic shock, and I survived. But I did not come back the same. My brain rewired itself for hypervigilance. Always scanning, always bracing. My body forgot how to relax. And at the time, I was too busy, young kids booming practice to heal what happened to me in the water.

Then perimenopause arrived and everything I buried down came roaring back. The hypervigilance got worse. A new OCD brain kicked in. Insomnia became a constant visitor. And rest? Rest became a place I could no longer reach. Searching for answers, I found a book. I think you know this one.

The body keeps the score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. And it taught me something that changed everything about trauma for me. Trauma doesn't just live in our memories. It lives in our bodies. And our female bodies especially remember it. Maybe for you, it's divorce. A diagnosis, a death. Maybe it's a slow drip of chronic stress,

or just the news we swallow every single day. Our bodies take it all in. And menopause has a sneaky way of handing it back to us. I've sat with so many women, exhausted, foggy, in pain, struggling to lose weight, who tell me the same thing. I'm doing everything right. and I still feel horrible. Hormone replacement, antidepressants, sleeping pills,

and still I am stuck. So if we're going to talk about how to live like a girl, we've gotta go here. We have to talk about trauma, what it is, how we hold it, and how we finally let it go, which is why I have brought you Dr. Frank Anderson. Dr. Frank is a Harvard trained psychiatrist and trauma therapist who has spent three decades at the intersection

of neuroscience and healing. He studied with Dr. Bessel van der Kolp and trained for years at his trauma center. His own memoir to be loved is the story of walking this path in his own life. He's brilliant. He's funny and he is deeply kind. Somewhere in this conversation, I believe you're going to find a missing piece of your own health puzzle.

And Frank will hand you the tools, simple, free tools to release what you're carrying and live life on your terms again. Let's dive in. Dr. Frank Anderson, I first have to say, welcome to my podcast studio. It's a lovely place to be. It's really wonderful. Yeah, it's great. It's beautiful to be here in the trees. Yeah.

So something really hit me with you. You are a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. Well, and that's not what hit me, but there's a lot to unpack there. It does not leave me. Everybody talks about it's crazy. It's really crazy. Yeah. And you have years of trauma work with patients and you've worked with Bessel.

And what I find is, you know, really, really fascinating is a statement you made that we can fix trauma in the head, but we're still working our trauma out in our body. So before we jump into anything, I really want to understand what trauma feels like. Like, how would I know if I fixed it in my head, my body's still going to remind me of that trauma. How do I know that? Well, let me, I'll say it a little bit differently because people think they're fixing it in the head. It's more like that. People talk and process, work it through.

Even the stages of trauma healing, there are three stages, safety stabilization, process your trauma, rehabilitation and repair. Bessel was part of creating these three-pronged approach. It's not accurate. It doesn't work is what we actually end up finding. Because processing trauma doesn't actually heal trauma. So does that mean talking like to a therapist like head to head? Doesn't work.

That kind of blows the lid off the mental health community. That's correct. That's correct. It really does. And that's why Bessel's book, The Body Keeps the Score, was a game changer. Yeah. Because people, and I learned all these modalities for talking through trauma and they don't work. Yeah. You need to do an experiential piece of work, something that gets in instead of up here.

And I was in psychoanalysis five times a week for 11 years. Wow. And I knew all about my trauma, but I was still carrying it in my body. And the way people know it is do you still get triggered? If you get triggered, it's still in there. So this is really interesting. I was talking to a friend this morning who had a lot of trauma growing up. And I was telling her I was interviewing you.

And I had sent her the other interview we were talking about. Yes. And she said what she started to. realize in her early 20s was she was reacting to things that seemed simple and she couldn't understand why she was having these strong reactions. That's it. That's it. When it's intense, it's yours.

Oh, wow. Okay? And it's really true. People think when they have an intense reaction, it's about the jerk and the stupid idiot and the what you did. But anything intense is activating something within you. it's intense at yours. And that's your clue that something isn't resolved, something isn't healed. And I use the word healing, even though it's so overused. I have a very specific view.

It's like releasing the energy that you absorbed from the trauma. It's an energy release. And it's stored in the body. So when you're having an intense reaction, there's probably 10 or 20 percent that's about something in the here and now. But oftentimes those intense reactions are the majority of the old wound being reactivated. So would it be fair to say, I'm going to use an example that a lot of women go through. Yes. I walk into a dark parking lot.

Yes. And all of a sudden I'm like on high alert. Yes. Maybe I've had a situation where I was mugged or raped or attacked. You've got it. And there's a mimicking of that experience that your nervous system is like you're not safe. That's right. Yeah. That's exactly right.

And sometimes it confuses people because, wait a minute, I was in therapy. I thought this was done. Wait a minute. Why am I reacting this way? Right. People don't understand. And that's one of the big missions for me is really processing trauma is not really healing trauma. It really isn't. So if that stuff is still in there, trauma gets encoded in what we call implicit memory.

Okay. It's unconscious. It's kind of, it gets stored in the body. body, I just was doing a week worth of psychopharmacology and psychobiology of where, how trauma memories get stored. They get stored in the amygdala, they get stored in deeper brain areas and within the body. And if it's not rewired and reworked, it's still in there. It's dormant.

Yeah. And it's susceptible to being triggered and it's susceptible to being activated. And that's your clue that it's still in there. Right. Now let me say something else before we move. on because what also is true is that trauma is never permanently healed. Oh. And that's important for people to know.

That's a bummer. Yeah, it isn't a bummer? PTSD, there's no cure for PTSD. There really isn't. However, the good news is I think of it as a spiral. Like you do a piece of work on that date rape in college, for example. And then you elevate energetically because you're not carrying that energy anymore. Okay.

You elevate and then you start living life and you're not getting triggered quite in the same way, but something else happens in your life 10 years later. And if you've done the prior work, you're reacting at this level. You'll learn something new. You'll learn a different dimension. You don't go way back to ground zero. Right. You learn something new is a different dimension then you elevate again. And then you elevate again. So trauma can get reactivated.

But when you do the work of healing, it's a different experience. You're not back right to where you were before. But the people that are back there is a sign like, oh, there really is more to do. And it's not more talking. Right. It's not more talking. I mean, how is that being received in the mental health world? Like I would think people listening to this would be like, okay, text the therapist.

Can I have my money back? Yeah, peace out. Yeah. Yeah, this is one of the things, like if you're in the trauma field, you know this. And it's getting more and more accepted. More accepted. That there's a lot of different types of therapy that are trauma-informed. Okay.

Right? And it's one of the things in my new program, I'm integrating different modalities because no one is good. I heard that. You say that. Yes. I think that I really resonated with that because one of the things that I teach with fasting and metabolic health. There's no one fasting length that's for everybody.

There's no, I get asked all the time what the fasting and eating windows should be, and I'm like, it's what works for you. And people don't like, sometimes don't like that answer. They want the absolute. They want the quick five minute, five second absolute answer. And that's not the case. So if we look at mental health, we go, okay, shoot, head-to-head talk therapy is not working. I got to fix it in the body.

Yes. But there's not a tool I can say, here's the tool to fix it. What I hear you saying and what you're creating with your work is a tool box. Yeah. And I want to educate clients. There's two things I'm doing in this next phase of my work. There's not enough therapists in the world to heal all the trauma. Yes, right.

There's too much trauma. So I'm creating a program for people in general public to learn how to heal on their own and in community and in parents. Okay? So we need to do this work outside of therapy and then teach people when they get stuck when they need to reach out and what to reach out for Because people don't know you go to your insurance company. They give you a person you don't even know what they're trained in Yeah. Do you understand? So that's the first piece is I want to educate the general public Around what is trauma what is available what do I need to do what can I do on my own

And it's empowered the empowered path right how can I do it and how far can I go? Second thing is I'm training clinicians on the integrated path is like there's, and I'm going to name, I'm going to put a bunch of letters together because all these methods have all their letters, right? It's like EMDR. There you go, right? So I movement desensitization. I was one of the first people trained in EMDR with Bessel back in 1992. You know, and bilateral stimulation of the right and left side of the brain helps process memories that get it's stuck and fragmented. And there's something about right and left side of the brain

because they have different functions. But that's in the brain. It's in the brain. Okay. That's a brain thing. EMDR is a brain thing. It's a memory processing tool. There is somatic therapies, sensory experiencing,

somatic experiencing and sensory motorcycle therapy. Those are the two body-centered therapies. And they help people focus on body, focus on your sensation. What do you feel it? Where do you feel it? You do all these experiments. There's incomplete action, like when you're carrying rage or anger, and it never got a chance to move through because you would have been killed.

Right. So there's a whole body of work that's somatically focused. Okay. Where do you feel it? What do you feel it? There's attachment focused therapies. AEDP is one of them. EFT is another one.

Right. Those are about the relationship and the connection. And often that's for attachment trauma. When you had those really early traumas without words where connection was necessary for survival, there's attachment focus work. And EFT is the doing, that's a different EFT. There's emotion focus therapy and that and Sue Johnson's, and EFT is different. That's using acupressure points and that reduces anxiety in a moment to kind of shift somebody's state. And then there's the IFS sort.

work, which I've done for years and years and years and created the trauma curriculum for IFS. That's the different parts or aspects of our personality that hold different things. Some protect, some carry pain, right? So there's a lot of choices out there. Cognitive behavior therapy. That's where it all started. CBT only works on distorted thinking. Doesn't work on emotions. It doesn't work on attachment or the body. So I'm like, yes, please, all. All of it, but people don't know what they need when. Yeah. So what I really want to teach.

So I'm going to tell you a story about my own path through trauma and it ties into my path through menopause, which we'll talk about in a moment. When I was in my late 30s, I was down in Cabo and I swam into a pile of Portuguese man-in-war. They wrapped around me, stung me, and I almost lost my life. Had the full life, had an NDE full-full-life review and my kids were really little at the time so it was even more traumatizing and so I came out of that experience with the question of why didn't I die and the answer I had for myself is because I needed to stay alive

to provide financially for my family so I became a workaholic that's a way to not feel so I'm you know I'm standing on the shoulders right now the woman who was a complete workaholic and when When I closed my clinic to start to write books and have a different life, I thought, I need to go to trial. I needed to do some therapy. So I went to EMDR. And I worked with an EMDR therapist, super helpful. I would get moments of like, this feels better, but then I could be re-triggered. And I didn't feel like I was completely getting myself to a new level of healing.

That's right. Okay, fast forward to the Palisades fire. Yes. I'm in the Palisades fire. I was there that morning. I was running from fire. I was watching things burn. And I get out of there. My therapist says to me, you have acute PTSD. And I was like, great, what do I do with that? And the only thing I knew to do was to isolate myself because I couldn't take anything else in. So I isolate myself. I write my book. And in July, we move here. And a friend says to me, do you want to come surfing with me? And I said, sure. And I got in the water on July 6th. And every day I've been in Santa Cruz, I have been in the water. And about two months in to surfing, which I suck at, I turn to my husband and I'm like,

something's changing up here. The thoughts are changing. Whatever is talking to me is telling me a different story. And I sit here and tell you that surfing, saved my life. Yes. Yes. And it was my therapy. Yes. That's correct. So is that an example of compound, like there was an original big trauma. There was compounding traumas. And then I went back into the environment in which I almost died. This is why talk therapy is not the solution. Yeah. I love what you're saying, Mindy. That is exactly what needs to happen. Do you know Bruce Perry? He's a guy who wrote

a book with Oprah. Oh, okay. He wrote, anybody who writes a book with Oprah, then it's like, boom. Yeah. But it's like, what happened to you? Not I am bad. It's like what happened to me.

Right. Right. Okay. And what he says, and I love that you figured that out on your own. Yeah. You're talking about a corrective experience. You're taught in the body. Yes.

Right. Because I'm just, I'm enjoying the process. But each time you're out in the life. water and you're having a safe, enjoyable experience, you're counteracting the trauma neural networks from the ocean and being stung and from the fires. So we encode trauma in danger and if we keep reliving it or keep getting triggered, we reinforce the trauma. Interesting.

One of the key components, not the only, one of the key components. of the key components is that corrective experience. Neuroscience calls it disconfirming. Interesting. Every time you go surf and enjoy yourself, you're having a disconfirming experience. Bruce Perry, the reason I brought him up, says it doesn't work in 50-minute hours in psychotherapy. Yes. He's like, that cost you thousands of dollars. That cost you thousands of dollars. It's like it doesn't actually work. He said the whole mental health system is set up on false scaffolding because in fact you can't do neuroplastic change in 50 minutes once a week. Wow. It doesn't work that way. I love that you're like every day I'm out there and my nervous

system is getting a corrective experience. Counteracting the trauma. Now I would also venture to say that processing some of those memories in EMDR before set you up to be able to take that in. Yeah, for because I was waiting for you to say, I got in the water and I freaked out. out all my trauma came back. The reason it didn't. Ah, good point was because you did the, you did the memory processing because it could have very easily brought you right back to Cabo. Yeah. But it didn't because you did the memory processing. Interesting. There are components of healing that are really important and talking isn't in there, but processing the memory. Yeah. You're like, I love that you said it like, it helped. Yeah. But it didn't, it didn't shift it. Right. And that I, oh, I'm so

I mean, that's so alive. I mean, it's literally like one of the biggest surprises of my life. And I had decided, okay, I'd throw anything at my trauma. I was willing to spend whatever I need to spend. And then I realized I just needed to go into the ocean. So could we say, and I've heard you talk about your father before. I know you just did a session with Terry Cole, who I love, who just wrote a book on, she told me she's right. She wrote a book on Father Wound. I was like, ah, I need that much. I think a lot of people do. Yes, 100%.

So if I have an experience with my father and I, anybody who looks like my father acts like my father, if I come up against that look alike, is my trauma being, can my trauma be reactivated? Definitely. Definitely. Yes, I can. Yeah, right. Yeah, and it does. And I'll tell you a little bit of my experience was like, you know, having this.

father who was abusive verbally and physically abusive, I ended up kind of seeking out narcissistic people in this attempt to heal by recreating. We find people. Right. Right. We find people who are kind of similar, but our psyche, our wounding says this is a chance at redemption. This is going to be better. This time it's going to work out. And that's all in the subconscious. All subconscious. I I hate to tell you this, but this is what attraction is. Right. You know this? Yes.

Okay. Because I've been studying it and I'm like, wow, like the people you have chosen to have a relationship with, maybe your biggest trigger. They're familiar because they often have similar wounds. Yes. But they have opposite adaptations. And so you think they're going to help cure yours. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah. That's why there's a 50% divorcement. Right. I was going to say, would this change divorces? Yes. Yes, it will. It's like, let's have similar wounds, but the agreement should be. Yeah. I'll be with you while you work on yours and I'll work on mine. Do you want to make that agreement? That's beautiful. That's what healthy connection is. It's not that we don't have shit in our histories because we do.

Right. But we're wanting the other. And the reason we want this, Mindy, if you think about it from an attachment perspective, kids need parents for survival. Yeah. So the instinct to get it elsewhere is rooted in our history. So we reach that way. But adults reenact like here's what ends up happening and I'm gonna your audience is mostly women. They're gonna be like yeah Frank. Thank you for speaking for my experience because I work with so many women around I want a man. If you're heterosexual whatever, I want a woman whatever the dynamic is that can give me what I needed, right? But what ends up happening for a lot of women is they end up taking care of the little boy in the man.

That never healed. And that never healed. And then they're like, I don't want to take care of another person. That's where sexual desire drops off. I'm attracted to this man, all this promise and hope and potential. Right. And I end up getting a little boy. Right.

And then I am the mother to a little boy. I don't want to have sex with a little boy. Yeah, interesting. It kills your desire. Right? That's what ends up happening when we're wanting somebody else to heal our wound and we end up being burdened by their wound. It happens for men in the same way in the opposite. Do you get that?

Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking like how many people partner up in a trauma response. Yes. Most of us. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, wait a second. And, you know, they always in certain. religious sex, people say, well, you've got to go and get some kind of training before you get

married. I'm thinking people need to get some agenda for trauma work. My husband and I went to Thailand early on in our relationship before we had kids. And it was fascinating because in Thailand, you have to go, this is part of the messed up, only the boys have to go to the monastery for two years at 18 years old to learn how to become a man and raise a family. So I was like, brilliant, but why is it only the men? Why don't the women need to go? Right. You know, that's, that's messed up there. But it's like, it's a really nice, like, go and work out your stuff before you raise a family. We don't make people do that. No. And I would love if both, you're 18 years old, go off for two years, work on your stuff, and then partner up because we don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. How many of you felt your

brain go offline the minute you hit your 40s. When my brain started to go offline in my early 40s, I was crazy scared. I went from being the woman who could hold everything together to not being able to get through a full work day. The positive thinking that had always been my superpower, it just disappeared. Worst case scenarios replaced it. Anxiety I didn't recognize. A version of myself, I didn't sign up for. I thought something was deeply wrong with. me. And then I went looking for answers. What I found didn't just help me. It changed the entire way I understand what it means to be a woman moving through this season of life. Your brain is not broken. It's remodeling. That's why I wrote, age like a girl, to really lay that out for all of you.

It's part science. It's part my own story. The messy, humbling, ultimately beautiful story of a woman who had to fall apart a little before she could figure out who she actually was. If you're in that right now, I want you to know you are not alone, and this is not the end. It might just be the beginning of the most powerful chapter of your life. So age like a girl, it's available now at Dr. Mindy Pells.com slash books. And please know, I am always cheering you on. So a lot of the women that I work with are really trying to lose weight. And fasting to me is one of the most miraculous tools.

Like I'm still watching the OZemphic movement and I'm like pretty soon people are going to figure out that fasting does the same thing that OZemphic does. It's just free. So but what I come up against and a big reason I want to have someone like you on my podcast is that when we start to make food changes, When we start to restrict the timing, I'm not even saying restrict, I'm not a calorie counter. I'm just saying let's eat everything within a certain window. What I start to see is everybody's patterns that they have been taught and maybe shamed about start to bubble to the surface. Where does what you're saying about trauma in the body and somebody trying to make change to lose weight, like can we get stuck? in that change because we're just triggered by the trauma that's unresolved.

Well, so there's a couple things that I think I hear you saying. So let me say some things and you can unpack it for me if I'm correct. So one of the things is when you start doing intermittent fasting and you're having these longer windows where you're not using food for soothing. Right. Okay. Yes. Then you're like, uh-oh, my main coping mechanism is no longer available. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, the stuff's going to come up. Yeah. Because we we eat carbohydrates particularly, but not only fats and carbohydrates for soothing. That's right. Right. And that's soothing the trauma. Yeah. It is unresolved. So when you start taking away somebody's main coping mechanism for 12 hours or 16 hours a day, stuff's going to come up. So they're not using that coping and that soothing. And if you start having metabolic changes,

This happens so much with the women that I work with. They actually, their body starts changing. Mm-hmm. It's threatening as hell. Oh, please talk about that. Okay, because I have this cushion to keep you away. Yes. Dangerous person.

Yes. Okay, so that's another thing. Everybody's obsessed with losing weight, except when they actually do, they get terrified because they're more sexually vulnerable. Yes. To being attacked. Especially women. Yeah.

100%. So there's a lot that goes into this craze to be thin and then the danger that's associated with it. Wow. Do you see it's both? And I see that I've brought this forward to my following for a while. I just didn't have the context that you have, but I see that. It's like there's a point in which people try to lose weight and they sabotage themselves. Or in my clinical practice, I watched women lose 50, 60 pounds only. to a year later gain it all back.

Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody's... Go ahead. If somebody's resonating with that, how do we help that person because they're always going to be losing weight, gaining weight?

Well, so some of it is I'm getting me weight back. Some of it is I'm gaining my weight back because I'm terrified. Some of it is I'm gaining my weight back because I haven't healed the reason that I had it there in the first place.

So there is work to do, right? Right. To you can't just lose the weight and think your history's gone. Right. It's not. Yes. Right. And so you're gaining it back because you're using your protector again because your trauma was never addressed.

Wow. You just eliminated your main coping mechanism without healing your trauma. So if you're going to really lose weight and then actually keep it off separate from the dietary changes that people make. And boy, carbohydrates are really addictive. They're super addictive. They're so addictive. Well, there's a lot of dopamine and serotonin and even the healthy ones. Yeah.

Yes, of course they are. It really initiates that in the brain. It totally does, right? And we know that. So, but if you're going to lose that weight and what I, when I'm working with somebody who's kind of on a weight loss journey for whatever reason they're on, I'm really tracking when is it okay? When does your system say, hey, I'm okay with losing this amount of weight?

And then it starts getting scary. So then let's stop. And then let's do some emotional work. And then let's continue on our journey once we feel safe enough to go to the next level. Right. Do you see what I'm saying? So track that instead of the all at once thing without doing any underlying trauma work. That's not helpful.

Or it's really it's listening because once you stop using your main coping mechanism. Right. We really want people to start listening internally to their way. I call it their calm power, strength, wisdom, and intuition. Because we lose intuition and trauma. We lose it because we have to disconnect from ourselves in order to survive. Fascinating. You get that?

Yeah, I got to believe that. So as you start losing weight and you start not needing your coping mechanism in that way, you have to, in my opinion, start listening internally. What is it saying? What's bubbling up? how do I address it, that internal connection so that you can move forward in a different kind of way. And often it means healing the unresolved trauma that you never dealt with. And can you heal it in, can you ask yourself questions, like go through a self-inquiry?

Because I'll tell you what fasting healed for me is my mom taught me to be an emotional eater. So every time we had a bad day, you got mother's love with a warm meal. So and then anytime you didn't feel good, my mom would always say maybe you need to eat something. And so I think a lot of people resonate with that. So the first day, I'll never forget the first 24-hour fast I did. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I was in my practice. It was, you know, waiting room packed.

It was so many people around. And I thought it was going to die. I was irritable. I was edgy. And I'm like, I need to eat. I need to eat. And I was like, whose voice is that? Yeah.

And I realized, oh, that's not my voice because I've done all this research. And I know I'm going to be okay. that's not my voice. That's mom's voice. And then I started to follow that thread and I started to see, oh, she rewarded me by giving me mother's love

and a warm meal and I've linked those two. And for me, I'm curious if this is what you're saying, just being aware of that. And then I tell people with fasting all the time, I'm like, it will allow everything to bubble up and you will see your relationship to food so much differently.

So can we heal it in the experience? Totally. Couple things. When you're aware of that voice, that's energy that's in you that's not yours. Right. Okay? When you say it's from my mother's voice, kids absorb their environment. We don't absorb being a victim only.

We absorb the energy of the perpetrator. I'm sorry. People are not aware of that. If you're not only a victim, you also absorb the perpetrator's energy. Okay, so it happens. And people disavow their perpetrator. That's why the other side's the enemy. Wow.

Okay. Yeah, and why they can't be around them. And they can't be around them, but they've split off what's in them also. So when those voice, you know, you're no good, you're worthless, or whatever comes up, you know, you need food for love, you know, whatever it is, you have to be in relationship to it. learn is this mine is this not mine where does this come from can i release that right right so there's energy that we have that's not ours that we just encode as if it's ours so that differentiation is this mine isn't this mine where does it come from super important okay because we take so much on that's not ours right right because of the environment we grew up in so we internalize that stuff

That's one thing. The second thing is with awareness, I don't even know what the exact number is. In 90 seconds, the average emotion is 90 seconds. It's something like that. It comes and goes. It comes and goes. So the awareness is like, okay, I can't eat till 6.30 and it's three. Right. Right. People start, it's like going to the emotional gym. That's the way I think about it. In those three hours. In those three hours. Yeah. Can I stay here for nine, for two minutes? minutes. Yeah. That's it. Like just what happens and what ends up happen is people start learning they can tolerate emotion because when you had food for love and soothing, you didn't have to tolerate any emotion. Yeah. You reach for a cookie or you reach for something. So it gives people expanding their bandwidth. Yes. Right. Yeah. Every time I've had one of those colonoscopies, I've had two because I'm like in my 60s, right? You're like, oh God, I had you know, you're like. Tons of Oh, holy cow, I could do this. Yeah. You're like, but you have to move through those difficult moment. Yes. And so I'm always like, you know, positive stress is useful. Yes. Positive stress is. Yes. It's a hormetic stress. Yes, exactly. So people have to be aware. Yeah. And that it's going to take a little bit, a couple minutes, not a lifetime. And sit in that because that's the nugget. That's the gold. So good. I mean, that's what, and that's what happened to me on that first 24-hour fast because I was seeing patience.

Yeah. I had to sit in it. That's right. And that's when I sat in it and I just was like, kept asking myself, what did you, what, why do you eat? Why are you? What's, and then that's where I, in that three hours. Yes. I figured out it was mom, not me.

Yes. You learned a lot. Yeah. Three hours by sitting. I say every moment, we repeat, we repress or we rise above. Yeah. Every moment, right? So take those opportunities.

And just do one moment. Right. This is the thing that people don't understand. Healing happens in micro, many micro corrective experiences. Interesting. Many micro, every single day surfing. Right. That's one, one, and it cumulate.

Yeah. It's not the big Hollywood moment that heals trauma. That's not actually how it works. Doesn't work in 50 minutes. Yeah. In a therapy session. So do one and do two. Then do two.

Just do one at a time. It is like the AA, like one, it's like one emotion at a time. One moment at a time. And it really does work. You know, you have 30 years of eating for love. Right. But it doesn't take 30 years to undo that pattern. That's beautiful.

It really does. I've heard you say that you can do EMDR by going and walking. Because you're doing... I do do EMDR. Right. But I think it was brilliant. Because I was like, oh, like, if I'm in, like, if I'm in somewhere where I'm feeling stressed, I'll do the, and I'll do it with my feet after doing the EMDR work. So when I heard you say that, I was like, oh my gosh.

That's what it is. That is amazing. And when I walk in the forest here, I used to listen to music and I stopped and I just listened to my thoughts after I heard you say that. I was like, why don't I just let what comes through and be curious about it. Yeah. So I'm so happier saying that because it's so true. This is separate from seeing my therapist, I do that kind of work. I'm up in the canyons. Right. At three to four times a week. My husband's kind of funny. He waits and he comes home. He's like, all right, what world problem did you solve? Because I'm out in nature. Yeah. Okay. Nature is a place where there's a lot of energy that's healing. Yeah. So nature in and of itself is healing. Bilateral stimulation. It's on.

movement, it's hand tapping, its ear, beep, beep, beep, or it's moving. So I know when I'm hiking or running in the canyons, I'm doing EMDR. My, I had a lot of physical trauma in my body. This is really activating integration. Right. When we're moving. So you can get a lot done when you're doing that kind of EMDR. And the thing that I say too, I want people to know this, We encode. I think about encoding. When we're doing EMDR, we're encoding something. If somebody's having an amazing moment, a corrective experience, encode it.

Oh, my therapist taught me this. Yeah, stop and encode it. Ah, okay, say more about this because my therapist said she did this at a Taylor Swift concert. She was having a corrective experience like the rest of the world. And she's like, and she was with her kids. And she's like, let's do this right now. because this experience is so amazing, we want it into our system. In the body.

In the body. We're encoding. So if you have a big aha moment, if you have a corrective relational experience, don't rush on. Stop and encode it. I'm always doing that with my clients. I'm like, wait a minute. What just happened there? I saw you smile.

I saw your whole body relax. I just felt so good right there. I'm like, well, then let's just encode that. That is brilliant. And so that's building your capacity to be in pleasure, in kindness, in what feels good. Yeah. Now, the reason I'm bringing that up, because good is not always good for people, if you know that. Pleasure, good, joy, happiness for trauma survivors can be terrifying.

Oh, because perpetrators sniff out that stuff. So good can feel really dangerous and scary. Interesting. Because when I'm happy, I'm going to get killed. When I'm in my power, when I let my guard down, that perpetrator is going to come after me. You see? So for a lot of women, not only women, those places of power, of feeling strong, of feeling good were dangerous once upon a time. So encoding good and positive builds that resource in a way.

It's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think is going to happen with the GLP1 users? Because this is something we've talked a lot about on my platform. And one of the things I've read is that the people using food to soothe depression, that that GLP1 or any of the weight loss drugs, they lose that, they lose that, they lose. lose that tool because they can't even physically eat.

Yes. And so they're more depressed and they're stuck facing their traumas. Yeah. It's so complicated. You know, this is going to be a weird analogy, but I think GOP ones are just like psychedelics. The reason I say that is this. Psychedelic medicine and I have a lot of friends and colleagues who are doing psychedelic medicine.

I did ketamine training. I've done that myself. There's going to be over time clarity about which psychedelic are good for what and which psychedelics are not good for what. Do you understand that? Like, catamine is very different than MDMA is very different than psilocybin. Who uses what for what? So we don't know.

Right now they're throwing it on everybody. And I think the GLP ones are exactly the same right now. Everybody's using it for everything. And I think we'll get clear about what things it's actually good for and what things it's not. What people are just using it as a panacea and what people are using it. I was working with somebody recently who was talking about using it for anorexia. Oh, fascinating.

Right? And part of what happened, which is really fascinating, is it cut out the food noise. Yeah, that's what people say. Right? Yeah. And it wasn't a weight loss tool. It was, oh, my gosh, I cut out the food noise, so I don't have to be obsessed about restriction. And it allowed me to make healthier choices.

Fascinating. Right? So that's a new, that's like, wow, we would use this for anorexia. That sounds so counterintuitive. Right. But when we learn about, and I'm not suggesting that everybody go do that, but we're going to learn about what it's good for and what it's not good for. The food noise is a big protector for a lot of people. You're going to focus on food.

This is what OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. Think all the time. You don't feel a damn thing. Right. So when we stop the food noise for some people. it's going to bring up your trauma. And if you know that going into the experience, you could do the work. Yeah, exactly.

Yes, that. I love the analogy to psychedelics. I'm a huge fan of psychedelics. And actually, the most recent book that I wrote, Age Like a Girl, I was originally going to call Microdocene Menopause. Got it. Okay. Great.

But the publisher wasn't ready for that yet. So they're like, can we stay with the Like of Girls? So I did put MDMA and psilocybin in there. But what I really found so fascinating about psychedelics, it all started with the 5HD to a serotonin receptor site. Because my brain was like, wait a second, that's serotonin and estradiol stimulates that. So we're losing estradiol, does that mean we're losing serotonin? Yes. But psilocybin can go in there.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that you're saying that because I used, so I worked with a guy, um, I can't remember his name back in Boston. He's no longer working, but he was a neuroendocrinologist. Okay. Andrew Herzog. That's who he was at Harvard.

And he was one of the few people that was looking at, back in the day, hormones and neurotransmitter. Right. Right? And I was working with him. I would send a lot of my women patients to them because, you know, perimenopause, pre-menstrual. Like there was clearly a hormonal neurotransmit. relationship for women, but nobody really knew what it was. And he was one of the first people to talk to me about when you're perimenopausal, there's a very strong connection, even between

the production of estrogen and serotonin. They're very closely linked. Metabolically. Yeah. So when you start losing your estrogen, you are going to start losing your serotonin. Yes. And, you know, postmenopausal women, SSRIs don't work as well. Oh, interesting. They don't, because Because they don't, yeah, they don't. So that's why we use like a faxor or wellbutrin, which are drug medicines that work on dopamine, noraphenephyran and serotonin, not just serotonin alone. So when we start learning the relationships between hormones and these neurotransmitters, it's a whole different thing for people.

And we haven't, the field hasn't grown as much as I think it should. It's better than it was. So I love that you're talking about the relationship between estrogen and sereneferon. aerotin because there is one. Not a lot of people know. It was interesting because when I was researching that book, this was like, I researched the book for over 10 years before I actually got it out into the world. So we weren't talking about HRT. Nobody was really using that. And I was like, oh my God, everybody just needs to microdose psilocybin.

And they're going to have a different experience with their symptoms. Yes. But then I started scratching under the surface. And this is what I want to ask you is you have, with estradiol going away, she stimulated dopamine, serotonin, acetycholine, oxytocin, BDNF, glutamate. Yes. Like, and so all, I call it Estrogens Girl Gang. Yes.

They're all vulnerable. Yes. So what ends up happening is we sit, we're at 48 and we're depressed. We can't remember and we can't hold on to information. Oxytocin, we don't feel like we want to connect with anybody. Yes. And so I call it the neurochemical armor comes down. And what I'm really concerned about right now in this menopausal moment is that what these women are being told is just put a patch on it and you're going to be okay.

And what I see is actually this armor comes down and all of a sudden you can truly see yourself. So you can look at depression and you can say, what in my life is not working for me anymore? You can look at serotonin and say, what doesn't bring me joy anymore? You can look at the loss of oxytocin and ask yourself, maybe I need connection. connection in a new way. So when we look at that transformation, I also see these traumas, like you can't hold it down anymore. It just freaking oozes out of you. Yes, because all of those chemicals that you were talking about neurotransmitters and hormones are what is connected to the neurobiology of PTSD and dissociation. Do you understand? Glutimate, serotonin, oxytocin, all of what you

talked about are what is dysregulated in PTSD also. So you're already dysregulated? You're disregulated and then you've got a buffer right with your estrogen and your serotonin if you're on an SSRI premenopausally right but when you start going through the transition what ends up happening is you lose your buffer and you lose everything else but that's also what is that like shows your PTSD more raw right because all of those chemicals are dysregulation related to PTSD. So yes, your trauma is going to bubble up during those times. So that is an opportunity. Not only to look at relationships and connection and joy, but to look at the trauma that was underlying that is now physiologically showing up because it was unresolved.

And so it makes so much sense. It was my experience. It's been many women's experience that I hear. It's like you can't hold it down. A friend of mine says, yeah, when we were drugged on estrogen, we can handle it. You got it. That's right. But when estrogen went away, we couldn't handle it. So does serotonin, which is calming. Right. Estrogen goes away, serotonin goes away, and then you're left with the neurobiology of PTSD.

And so the PTSD can actually reveal it. You got it. That's right. So again, I'm going to go back to this idea of what we're saying before you get married. Perhaps you should, you know, understand each other's traumas, have a plan for it. I think menopause is the same thing. same thing. Yes. Because I watch so many women that are depressed and anxious and irritable and the gray divorce so many women leave marriages. And I'm standing back and

thinking, no, no, there's something different happening here and I think it's rooted in trauma. So fascinating. I'm thinking about the equivalent in men or not. Because I. Well, Andropause is real. Yeah. Well, so that's what I'm trying to think. I was just trying to think as you talking because a lot of women go through this transition and men testosterone levels certainly do drop but I'm not I don't know enough about neuro physiologically what happens I mean muscle tone is gone sex is sex desire is gone there's a lot of associated features to testosterone but I don't think it's an equal shift I think with testosterone what people always think of it as libido but it's so much more

motivation. Yeah. So what you start to see in men, when both men and women is you see that there's just this drive to be motivated goes away. And sometimes that can be like, I'm not motivated to even work on my relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So then there becomes that issue. It's it, but it's interesting to look at the hormonal changes postmenopausally, paramedopausally. And I don't know the timing. Maybe you know more than I do around when men's testosterone tends to dip. It's probably later. It's later. Then when women. Right. go through their metaphor. And it's based off of how, you know, what kind of foods you're eating and all and all of that as well.

So, but I think that's part of what is complicated in relationships because women are in these places. Yeah. And they're like, oh my goodness, but men are not joining them physiologically. Yes. They're not joining them. Yeah. Yeah. And if when you look at evolutionary physiology, you know, technically a woman when her reproductive system goes away,

she actually moved to a different position in the clan. Yes. And whereas a man, he can. continued to have the same position the whole time. His strive is, he's hitting his stride and he's continuing to go. Yeah. So then if a woman is going through menopause, this is, this is the conversation I want to change. Help me, Frank.

Because I just am so, I'm sitting there watching the world go, honey, you're depressed. It's because we read this study wrong and we're just going to put a patch on you and you're going to be okay. And what I'm over here saying is why are you depressed? What is there? Why are you anxious? Why are you? So many women are rageful. Why are you full of rage? Let's talk about that because your neurochemical armor just came down and gave you a gift. Yes.

And what we're seeing in the culture is this idea, just put a patch on it and I'll all be okay. It's like have another cupcake is what it's like, it's like that. And I think it's important. I love what you're saying. And I think it's important to educate women in the way that you're doing. This is going to happen. Right. Your shit's going to come up.

You have an opportunity here or not. Yeah. Are you going to choose to cover it up or are you going to choose to work on it? Right. Because not everybody is aware that it's going to happen and not everybody is going to choose, okay, it's time in my life to work on this. That's right. Because I think that's an important decision. Mm-hmm.

Because it happens to you. Right. As opposed to choosing. Right. to take the opportunity. Do you see what I'm seeing? Yeah, yeah. So I love the way you're educating like, hey, there's an opportunity and the shit's going

to come up. Didn't come up. You suppressed it when you were walking down the aisle. Now is another chance that's going to show up again here. Are you interested in doing the work and doing that deeper dive or are you not? Or maybe not this year, maybe in six months. Right. So maybe take the replacement hormones until you're ready to do the work.

Yes. Would be the kind of discussion I'd like to have. Yeah. awareness instead of it happening to you. Right. When you're maybe not ready to do that work. Right. Right.

Or know how to. Or know how to or know what the resources are. Yeah. To do the work. I think it's a little bit like OZempic. What I've seen is a lot of doctors are like, I'm going to put you on this. It's going to give you a jump start, but then we're going to work on your diet. You've got to do that.

That, you know, then you're, otherwise you're going to get the muscle wasting. Right. Otherwise you're not going to make any change. And as soon as you stop, you're going to get your diet. all your weight. It's the same thing. Like, take it as an opportunity. Yeah. Right. To then do the work. Right. And not everybody wants, that's one of my passions is it's possible to heal this. Like, I really want people to know. Yeah. Like, it's not six steps on Instagram. Sorry. You can't find it in a real. Oh my God. I say. I say this all the time. I'm like, stop building your health habits around a 90-second real. Yes. It's true.

So that's not going to work. Yeah. Right. And are you here? But it can work. Right. And here's a pro. Here's a way to do it.

Yeah. Like, and there is a way to do it. Yeah. Right. I really want people to know that. I like, I really, that is my, that is my, I was kind of, after I wrote my second book, transcending trauma, it was like, I got a message. I would like, went out for a run. Literally, I was like, my psychotic.

Am I hearing voices? It's like, you have to bring trauma healing to the world. I'm like, me? Are you sure? Like, and here I, my life has exploded. Yeah. In bringing trauma healing to the world. Like, that is really my purpose and passion.

And it's like, this is possible people. I really want people to know, but they have to have the tools and education to know what am I going to do. How am I going to do it? Yeah. When am I going to do it? Yeah. So it's like re-empowering. Trauma treatment is a reenactment of trauma.

Okay? Okay. Let me tell you why. If you have been violated in any kind of way, agency was taken away from you. It's what relational trauma is. Right. Disfunctional families, all the things. And then you're going to go to a therapist who's going to tell you what model of therapy you need or how many sessions you need. You're going to go to the insurance company who's going to tell you how many you're allowed to have. Oh, the insurance company. You know what I mean? So like good old insurance company is really thinking of you there. But you go into treatment disempowered and other people are making decisions about your trauma that you were disempowered around. The whole thing is set up in a disempowered way.

That's why my I want to empower people. I want me to go into a therapist and say I'd like six sessions of EIFS or 10 sessions of EMDAR because I've been educated. And I think my wisdom tells me. this is what I need. That would be amazing. That's what I really want to do. That would be amazing. We educate people so that the treatment is empowering.

The treatment is a corrective experience. Yes. As opposed to being not. Yep. You know what I mean? You know, it reminds me one of the joys I've had in my most, in the last couple of years is I've been working with Leanne Rhymes. She's become a dear friend.

That's so interesting. She just followed me yesterday. Oh, really? Oh, yes. I might have said something about you. She needs to know you. Okay. So, in fact, I will let her know.

There you go. It's so funny. She's an amazing human. That's great. And so we had done a lot of work on her gut. And then it came around time for her holiday shows and she got a cold. So for a singer to get a cold, that's like the worst thing possible. Because if you sing with inflamed vocal cords, it can start to really wear those chords down.

This woman's been singing since she was 14. So her E-E-E-N-T gave her. an antibiotic. And I was like, oh, God, no, we've been spending a year fixing your gut. This is going to destroy. Yeah. And so what we did was so fascinating. I said, okay, here's what I want to ask you. Today, do you feel like you should take the antibiotic? And she said, I don't, I don't really have a sense I should. I'm like, okay, so for today, we're not going to take it. Tomorrow, let's talk. I love that. And let's see if you need the antibiotic. We did this every day for seven days. And the cold went away. And she never took it.

Beautiful. That's what I'm talking about. Yes. Listening to your gut and your intuition because there is wisdom in there. There is, I love that you did that. That's organically knowing and listening and trusting. I was just like, how are we going to do this? We just got a whole year fixing your gut and she doesn't want to be on it, but I understand how important her vocal cords are. So listen. So it seemed like a really appropriate response. So I want to go back to the toolbox here because I hope. in this conversation people are getting like oh yeah connecting a lot of dots so we've talked a lot about EMDR I want to go back to psychedelics because this has probably been the most transformative healing tool for me and I don't think outside of the water

yes that's that's number one yes but what has come from psychedelics for me is compassion for myself I started to heal a lot of my father wound yeah through psychedelics because I realized what the messages of criticism in my head were his, not mine. Yes, that's right. Yeah. And so talk to me about, I know each psychedelic does something a little bit different. That's right. That's right.

It's hard for people to find therapists, but where do you see psychedelics in this experience? I'm mixed about it in the way, same with GLP ones, same thing. I really am. And I say mixed truly. It's like, do you know, Ned Halley, L-O-L and John Rady, do you remember them for ADHD? Back in the day, every single kid, every single college kid and high school kid had ADHD. It was like popular to have ADHD.

You know what I mean? So everybody was diagnosed with ADHD. And then it was kind of a mess. It was way, those pendulum swung. Okay? And there's a pendulum swing with psychedelics right now in a way that I'm cautious about. Yep. And everybody wants the pill for the quick fix so they don't have to do the work.

Yep. Okay. And there's a lot of people trained in psychedelics that actually don't know how to do treatment. Yes. Okay? I was in a ketamine training and I'm like, you're, I don't know what it was like, you're a lawyer. Like, you can take psychedelics, but you shouldn't be working with people. Right?

You know what I mean? So there is this kind of wild, wild west around who can get trained. Yeah. And bigger, the underground world. Right. Because MDMA is not legal. The only one is ketamine right now. So everybody who's doing everything else is underground.

I work with a client who was kind of dissociated for 10 years because he did underground MDMA. And he got so, they give him a booster dose and another booster dose. He got so shot out in the Netherlands that his whole system shut him down emotionally because it was way too much. Okay, so there are a lot of people

that are doing this in the wrong way. Right, yeah, I agree. And it's going to cause trouble in the way that it did way back in the 60s and the 70s where they kind of got rid of it because it was overdone. Yeah. Is that everybody? Absolutely not. Are there amazing people?

Some of my best friends in the world are steeped into the psychedelics world. And they're doing it in a thoughtful, creative, mindful way that really helps people. Agreed. Right. And so for me, we're in the swing right now. Yeah. I'm a little bit happy. and this might piss off the MDMA people

that it didn't get FDA approved so quickly. I will tell you as somebody who has done four MDMA journeys, I can understand why. Right? It's, there's a, there's a, some people have amazing, beautiful experience. Some people have horribly traumatizing experiences.

Also, your default mode networks down and whoever's sitting across from you, they can get in there. 100%. And there's been untoward things happening to people who are in an altered state. I would agree about that. We know that, you know, and that's part, that was part of the problem.

So there is that happening. Right. And and and. Right. There is so much benefit. We haven't had anything like this when it's done well in the right hands to change the field like this has. So I'm excited to let it all settle itself out. So that we're using it for people like, I had two.

I had one of each of these experiences in my ketamine. One was, I could just feel it, I would have jumped out the window and killed myself. Whoa. It was so terrifying for me. The first time I did it, and I took glossing, and I told them, I am sensitive. I'm a super vigilant, sensitive person.

They gave me one, it didn't work. Then they gave me another one, it didn't work. Then they gave me a third one, and I got shot into the guys like, you fractalized. Congratulations. I'm like, I was gonna die. If I were on the second floor of the building, I was going to jump out the window had I not had sitters there to help me. Wow.

It was horrible. Second time I did it like, why the fuck did you do it again, Frank? It's another question for another time, right? But I was seated at the hand of the divine. I found out my purpose in life and it changed my life forever. Like I was luck. I had both of these experiences. I will, nobody can tell me that doesn't exist.

Right. I know. And I know I'm one of the pillars to change. the world. One of the pillars, not the pillar. And it's so real in a way that has changed my life in a beautiful way. And we just, so I was, had both. And we have to get better. It's sorting out who needs what, when, and how much. That's all. I just feel like we need a little bit more time. There needs to be, and more protocols. And just like, I see a theme here of like same thing with GLP ones. Same things with the HRT. Like we're just like one size fits all. Here you go. And we get excited.

Yeah. People are desperate. Yeah. For help. And we want to help them. Right. Yeah. Psychedelics is, I think it's going to be here to stay. And I like ketamine is an anti-glutomate drug. You talked about glutamate. I talk about glutamate all the time. It's one of the main excitatory neural transmitters in the brain. Yep. Decreasing glutamate is a good thing. Right. In the right doses. Too much of it causes psychosis. Right. I've treated so many gay guys in K-holes because they took too much ketamine. Oh, whoa. And it causes psychosis and you need to treat it with antipsychotics. And when you can decrease the excitability enough that people do the work they need to do, it's life-changing. The integration sessions, everybody who does the work, right? You know this,

right? Yeah. You get a therapeutic effect from the drug itself, clearly. Right. Whether it's MDMA for six to eight hours or ketamine for three hours or whatever. And then the neuroplasticity. Do you know Carter Harris? No, but I know about the neuroplasticity. The neuroplasticity is the window. And it lasts differently for each psychedelic. So MDMA, that's why MDMA in the study was every three months.

Okay, because MDMA is a long half-life. And so the neuroplasticity window is much longer. So you can do a lot of work. amazing work. Catamine has a shorter half-life, so the neuroplasticity is like two weeks or so, or three weeks. So you take advantage of the effect of the drug and do the work, people, do the work, right? That's the beauty of it. Yes. It's setting, set, attention, and the integration center. And when you have the right people helping you, game changer. I listen, in the interview with you in Bessel, he talked about how hard it is to get new thought into people.

people's minds. And that was when I thought about psychedelics because I was like my in my research on psychedelics, the neuroplasticity is off the charts. Yes. And when you look at what a woman going through menopause, the neuroplasticity is going away. This is why I keep coming back to these two done in the right situation. It's really powerful. The older we get, the more rigid we get. And it's not only it's in our brains. Yeah. Because neuroplasticity is less and less and less. the older than that. Right. So when you can have a boost of neuroplasticity, take advantage of it because then possibility and option for change is real.

Right, right. But it's got to be done correctly. So do you think that trauma work, if we're coming at it through the perspective of the body, is a daily habit? It should be, if it's done correctly, it should be. And it's got to be, one of the things about trauma, the work with trauma is the be with instead of in. Okay, say more. Yeah, I've heard you say this. Be with instead of in. Like, I want people to visit their trauma, not get stuck there. There's a lot of psychotherapy that it's like,

I'm here because I drink too much, and then you spend the next 40 years talking about your mother. Sorry. Like, that's not why people come in. They want to change a behavior. Right. But what oftentimes is most behaviors are rooted in unresolved trauma. Right. So let's go back and visit, not relive get stuck there. Right. And the visiting is the capacity to be with the emotion, not in it. Right. Okay. You need observing capacity. I feel sorry for that little boy. Okay. I'll tell you this coming up. Like I was hit, like I was hit as a baby in the crib. Like I knew, I thought it was because I was caught playing with a Barbie doll at six years old, but that wasn't the case. My dad started hitting me when I was a baby in the crib. So it was like, well, it wasn't. because I was gay, right? Right. Had feminine traits. And I in my healing was able to hold the sorrow

of me feeling sorry for this baby in the way that I couldn't be there for this little baby. It's like you like you parented yourself. It's the yeah and it was just I couldn't I didn't cry. It's the most I've ever cried my whole life. It was just gut-wrenching sorrow but it was the capacity to be with instead of in. I wasn't the little baby feeling the pain of being hit. But you were, I was with the baby, holding the sorrow. Yeah. You know, and that's the, that's what's required. It's not only a corrective experience, it's the sharing the experience too, which is part of what release. Okay, say more on that. So if you have trauma, the part that holds the trauma is going to hold the experience until it shares it in some way.

Not just the story. It shares the thoughts, the feelings, and the physical sensation. With somebody else? Somebody else, either internally or relationally. So my husband is the most healing relational experience I've had my life. So it can happen this way. Yeah. When somebody's there and attuned and with you and loves you and gets you and sees you.

that's healing because you've shared what you've gone through and you feel met. Okay, so the part that holds the trauma has to not be the only holder of it. It's got to share it. Okay. Not just the story, this, this, this, this. It's the thoughts, the feelings, the physical sensations. Right. And then the corrective experience happened.

Got it. So that combination, you know, you were, EMDR has the width component. They say, be with it while it's happening. Be with it. So it's the being with and you kind of hold that experience. So those two things are important for trauma healing and release to happen. But yeah, if we use the EMDR example, she did tapers. So I was holding the tapers.

Yeah. I would think about a situation. So I was with the situation first, but then I expressed it to her. Yeah. So with it. But it was both. has people it is catharsis is what they call because they they start reliving it not good right never want people to relive it right so when you do it correctly you're with it yeah so

you're with it so you're with the part that was there in the water right and you're also sharing it with somebody else so that sharing happened yeah and it's the experience of it not just the story so does that equal like if I'm going to share an experience with a good friend or not it could be just be like, hey, this came up for me. Yes. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of research about women as they get older, how important their girlfriends are. Totally. And I would absolutely agree, but I think it's because when we get together, there's this vulnerability that is safe to express when you're with the right friends. Totally. And in that, it's like that in some sense is a version of therapy. It's a version of

healing. Yeah. I had this, this thought kept coming up into my head when I wrote Transcending Trauma. trauma blocks love, love heals trauma. And then as I've kind of percolated on that, it's like trauma blocks love and connection. And it's love and connection that heals trauma. And so that's exactly what we're talking about. That's part of what has happened post-pandemic. There's so much isolation in certain ways because of our not being with people. Right.

And we have this like social media connection with tons of loneliness. Right. But what's happening in the world now is people are wanting to be with each other again. Yes. In a very, right? You feel that in a very different way. And it's part of that connection piece, which is very healing. Yeah. Trauma, often trauma happens in isolation, right? And healing happens in connection. And that could be internally as well as relational. That's beautiful. Yeah. So if we were to create a toolbox for the women listening to this right now, if they're like, oh, wow, I'm 60 years. old, I realize that some of the anxiety I'm feeling maybe from my childhood, but I've never done any work before. Where would that woman start? If you're on your own, I would start journaling. To tell you the truth. Yeah, yeah. No. Like, really, it's like you've got to start being with it. Yeah. You got to start, maybe you go for walks. Yeah. Without your music, you know, alone. Like spend some time by yourself. Maybe it's

10 minutes a day, you know. So can you do that, right? And can you start the internal exploration? That's what that's the first step for me is can you stop and start going in? And there's all different ways to go in. Yeah. And there's great neuroscience on journaling. Yeah. Journaling is really great. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of, you know, so maybe you journal. Maybe you sit with yourself for 10 minutes a day and start allowing what coming comes up to come Like and then you can start I have people map out things I'm like map out your behaviors What are your distressing behaviors map them out do art like that's an expression Yeah, that's really therapeutic right and then when you map out your behaviors

Rank them as to which ones are the most distressing yes okay don't work on 10 right here's work on one at a time yeah and then interestingly enough when people start journaling and they map out their behaviors then I want them to start mapping out their traumas because they start seeing a connection between their behaviors and their traumas. And then you can set up a priority for healing and really one at a time, like this new program that I've created is like, you want to work on anger? Work on anger.

Don't work on like all of it. You know, like so prioritize it, pick one and do one at a time. It'll bring up a lot of stuff. but it's okay. You do kind of one at a time. And our psyches are set up to stay away from pain. So there's going to be this. I'm going to eat. I'm going to drink. I'm going to forget to do it. The consistency is so because it's a natural. Like the fire is hot, says the caveman. Don't touch the fire. Like we're wired that way. So when the resistance comes up, because it's going to just stay. Just 10 minutes. And do what you said earlier, which is sit with the discomfort. Become friends with it. Yes. Understand it.

Yeah. You know, you don't have to spend the whole day in it. No. Yeah. Small micro doses of corrected experience. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

Well, I could talk to you forever. I have like a thousand more questions, but I really think, you know, what I wanted to accomplish today is this understanding of trauma through this new lens. Yes. Because this is what I've experienced in my own. self and and I haven't been able to put words to it as well as you have so thank you for your work and please tell Bessel thank you I read that book probably 10 times right yeah I go back I highlight it yeah I go back to it it's really a powerful book yeah to put trauma on the map in a way

yeah that's so powerful and helpful and now it's we're gonna do take it to the next right and so then how do people find you because I know my audience is to be like that guy was amazing Let's go get more of him. Yeah, so I'm on all the things. On all the things. I think probably most active is Instagram. Frank underscore Anderson MD. My website, which is where my new program is the path,

I'm super excited about, really like last week, is this new program to start healing in the general public. Amazing. Frank AndersonMD.com. My website, newsletter to find all. the things. I'm doing a free event next week on couples in trauma. Oh wow. So just sign up for the newsletter and then just kind of be a part of it all. And then I'm on LinkedIn and YouTube. I don't even know what it. I don't even know what Facebook. I'm sorry. No, I'm the same way. I'm like everywhere.

Yeah, I'm everywhere. I know. I was like I'll ask, I'll ask Michelle who runs my company. But those are the two that I know about. Yeah. Well, thank you for your work. My sense with you is that you're just at the beginning, that I know you've been doing this for a while, but this message is so ripe. People are ready for this. And I'm a bridge. This is what I feel. I'll say this last thing, because I've been in the ivory tower for most of my career. I know all the science. I really do. And I've been in therapy for, like too many years, 40 years. Like, I know trauma from the inside out. I don't. I'm not only an expert. I know it from the inside out. And I'm a big personality so I can share it to the general public. So I do kind of feel like I'm a good person as a bridge. Yes, I would agree.

To bring that into the world. And I'm excited to do it. Yeah. I really am. It really is energizing. So I'm happy to be one of the people. Talk about the trauma Avengers. Right?

I want to be one of the Avengers. I see like you guys with like like arms crossed and like superhero outfits on. And you say you guys, I'm going to tweak it a little bit. There's got to be more women in that damn group because men are, excuse me, fuck things up for a long period of time. And so it's like, it's got to be women because, yeah. And women have been traumatized by men for centuries. Yes. So the tide is changing.

Yes, agreed. In a way that I think we need to change it. So that Avengers is going to be a mixed gendered group. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Coming to my forest. Beautiful.

And spending the afternoon with me. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is. I want to tell you about something that genuinely moves me. And that's watching what happens

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